The Little Old Portrait

”‘I cannot bear their going away,’ he continued. ‘It is not only that we shall miss them so sorely, but I have a sort of fear for them – our lady and this tender little creature; who would protect them and take care of them in any danger as we – their own people of Valmont – would?’

”‘But what danger could come to them?’ said Madame Germain. ‘You must not be fanciful, my boy. They will be in the Marquis’s grand house in Paris, surrounded by his servants. And though I have no love for him, still I have no doubt he will take good care of his sister and her child. Indeed, the Countess has told me that that is one of the arguments he uses with her – he says it is not safe for two ladies alone as they are in the country in these unsettled times. For it appears there is a great deal of discontent and bad feeling about; that was a terrible business your father was telling me of the other day – a château burnt to the ground in the dead of night, and several of the inmates burnt to death, and no one can say who did it.’

”‘But then it is no mystery as to why it was done,’ said Pierre. ‘The lord of that country is noted for his cruelty. Father said he would not wish you ever to hear the horrors that he has committed among his people; what wonder that at last some one should try to avenge them? And, mother, the Marquis is both feared and hated. I hear strange things and see strange looks when he comes over here. I cannot think that he is a good protector for our ladies. They are far safer here at Valmont, where every one loves them.’

”‘It might be so were they going to Sarinet,’ said Madame Germain, who was of a cheerful and hopeful disposition; ‘but in Paris! In Paris, where are the king and queen, and all the great lords and ladies, and the king’s regiments of guards! – ah no, it is not there that there could ever be any revolt.’

”‘But dark days have been known there before now, mother, and dreadful things have been done in Paris,’ persisted Pierre, who had read all the books of history he could get hold of, and had thought over what he had read. ‘I could tell you – ’

”‘Hush!’ said Madame Germain, speaking still, as they had been doing all the time, in a whisper; ‘the child is waking.’

“And as she spoke Edmée opened her blue eyes and looked about her in surprise. As she saw where she was she gradually remembered all, and how it was that she had fallen asleep there, and a look of distress crept over her face as she held out her hands to her friend Pierre.

”‘I did not know I had fallen asleep,’ she said. ‘My eyes were sore with crying. Oh, Pierrot, are you not sorry for your poor little Edmée?’

“Pierre did not speak, but his lip quivered, and he turned away his face. He was too big now to cry, he thought, but it was very difficult to keep back the tears.

”‘Come now, my children,’ said Madame Germain; ‘you must not look so sad, or my lady will think I have very badly fulfilled her commission. You must cheer Edmée, Pierre; talk to her of the happy time when she will come home again to her own people – two, three years soon pass! Ah, when you are my age you will see how true that is, and not wish the time over.’

“Edmée drew the kind face down to hers and kissed it.

”‘I will promise you to try to be cheerful with mamma,’ she said. ‘It is only here I will allow myself to cry. Now I must go home; Pierrot will come with me to the little gate.’

“But all the way home to the Château through the village the children scarcely spoke, though usually their tongues ran fast enough. Their hearts were too full; and when they got to the little gate through which a footpath led directly to the side door by which Edmée usually entered, she did not urge Pierre to come in to see her mother.

”‘Come to-morrow,’ she said; ‘by that time I shall be a little more accustomed to it. To-night it will be all I can do not to cry when mamma speaks to me, and to see you looking so sorry makes me still more unhappy, my poor Pierrot!’

“So they said good-night at the gate. I would not undertake to say that on his way home Pierre’s resolution not to cry now that he was so big a boy held good. There was no one to see him except the little birds and a rabbit or two that scudded across the path through the park – and it was his first real trouble.

“His tears would have been still more bitter, poor boy, had he known how few ‘to-morrows’ he and Edmée would have to spend together; for when the little girl entered the Château she was met by unexpected news, and Nanette, who had been on the point of going to fetch her, told her to go at once to her mother’s room, as the Countess wished to speak to her.

“Feeling still bewildered by all she had heard, Edmée obeyed half-tremblingly. A glance at her mother told her there was further trouble in store for her. The Countess was in tears, and her room, usually so neat and orderly, was all in confusion: cupboards and drawers open, and great travelling cases, which Edmée did not remember ever to have seen before, standing about, and the Countess’s maid, Franchise, an old woman who had been in the Valmont family since the time of the last Count’s mother, was fussing about with trembling hands, her red eyes telling their own tale.

”‘Oh, Edmée, my darling, I am glad you have come back!’ exclaimed her mother, but without giving her time to say more the little girl flew into her arms.

”‘She has told me, mamma – mother Germain has told me. But why are you crying? You were not so unhappy when I went out this morning – and poor Françoise too!’

”‘It is only, my darling,’ said the Countess, taking her little daughter upon her knee, ‘it is only that the summons has come rather sooner than I expected. A courier has arrived from Sarinet with letters from your uncle, desiring us to arrange for going there almost at once. He requires me to be there a few days before going on with him and the Marquise to Paris, for there is much to arrange. So, Edmée, my sweet, we must say good-bye to our dear home.’

“It was hard, very hard, for Edmée to keep her resolution of doing nothing to add to her mother’s distress. But she bravely drove back her tears, and throwing her arms round the Countess’s neck, kissed her tenderly.

”‘Don’t cry, dear little mother,’ she said; ‘Madame Germain has been speaking to me, and I am going to be very good. I am going to learn my lessons in Paris so well, so very well, that you will be quite surprised how clever I shall become, and then we shall all the sooner be able to return to our dear Valmont. When are we to start, dear mamma? You see, I am going to be very good. You need not be afraid to tell me all, and she sat up, valiantly blinking away the tears that would, keep coming.’

“The Countess was greatly relieved.

”‘My good Marie,’ she said – ‘Marie’ was Madame Germain’s first name – ‘it is very kind of her to have spoken so wisely to my little girl, and it will make all easier for me. Yes, dear, it will be soon, very soon – the day after to-morrow we have to leave for Sarinet.’

”‘The day after to-morrow!’ exclaimed Edmée. ‘Ah, yes, that is very soon.’

“But no other words of complaint or distress escaped her.

“And two days later saw the Countess and her daughter in the great big travelling carriage, which had made but few journeys since the good Count’s death, on their way to the Château de Sarinet. They were accompanied by Nanette and her uncle Ludovic, who had long been a sort of steward in the house, and could not make up his mind to see his lady go to Paris without him. Poor old Françoise would gladly have gone too, but at her age it was out of the question, so she remained, with many tears, at Valmont, where she kept all in the most perfect order, so that, as she used to say, ‘if my lady comes back at any moment, there will be nothing to do but light the fire.’ And on the box, between the rather fat coachman and Ludovic, Pierre Germain managed to squeeze himself in. He had begged hard to accompany them all the way to Sarinet, but the Countess had judged it better not. Her regard for the boy and his parents was very sincere, and it would have pained her for him to have been treated at her brother’s house like a common servant-boy, as, indeed, no servant-boy was ever treated at Valmont. So Pierre bade his dear ladies farewell at Machard, a little village where they stopped for the first night, whence he returned by himself to his home, for twenty or thirty miles on foot were nothing to the sturdy boy.

“It was a sad farewell – sadder my mother has often told me, than the actual circumstances really warranted, and many times, on looking back to it, she has thought that some foreboding of the terrible events to come must have been on their spirits.

”‘Good-bye, my faithful little friend,’ were the Countess’s last words to poor Pierre, as he reverently kissed her hand; ‘you are the true son of your good father and mother – I can wish no better thing for you, my boy, than that you may grow up to resemble them.’

”‘My lady,’ said Pierre, the tears coursing down his face, ‘I can never, never thank you for all your goodness to me, but my life – everything I possess – is yours and my little lady’s. I would give my life for you if it would do you good.’

“And the future showed that his words said no more than the truth. As for Edmée, she was sobbing too much to say farewell to her childhood’s friend at all. But the last view he had of her face was drowned in tears – the dear little face that had so seldom been aught but radiant and sunny.

“She brightened up a little when they started again. It was the first time in her remembrance that she had been so far from home, and novelty has always great charm for a child. Travelling was not in those days as it is now, when the public conveyances go to Paris at least twice a week, and one does not require to be a great lord to be able to visit distant places. And Edmée felt as if she had got quite to the other side of the world when, on the evening of the second day, the heavy travelling carriage turned in the gates of Sarinet and drew up before the great door, where her uncle, the Marquise, a small delicate-looking lady, with a peevish expression, and a boy, whom, though he had grown taller, she knew again in an instant to be her cousin Edmond, were all waiting to receive them with proper ceremony.

“Edmée turned as quickly as she could, with politeness, from the smiles of her uncle, which she somehow always fancied to be half-mocking, and the careless greeting of her aunt, to the boy cousin, of whom she had often thought with pity. She wondered if he had become better-tempered and less selfish. But the first glance was not reassuring. Except that he had grown taller he was very much the same as the cross, haughty little boy of two or three years ago.

”‘What do you look at me so for, my cousin?’ he said; ‘I have grown tall, have I not? You are taller too, though of course much smaller than I. But you are very pretty. I find you even prettier than before, only your hair is arranged in a very old-fashioned way. However, I am delighted you have come to live with us. I shall now have some one to amuse me, and for you too – you will find Paris, and even Sarinet much livelier than Valmont.’

“Edmée had grown redder and redder during this speech, but Edmond did not seem to observe it.

”‘And how is that stable-boy you used to be so fond of?’ continued Edmond. The children were a little apart from the elders of the group by this time, so, fortunately perhaps for future harmony, no one overheard when the girl flashed round upon her cousin.

”‘Edmond de Sarinet,’ she said with a dignity that was comical and yet touching, ‘I warn you now, once for all, that I will only be your friend – I will only play with you and be kind to you – on condition of your never daring to say one word against my dear home or my dear friends. And this, sir, it is just as well you should understand from the beginning,’ and then, overcome by all she had gone through in the last few days, she flew to her mother, and hiding her face in her arms burst into tears.

”‘What a little savage!’ said the Marquise in a low voice to her husband. But the boy Edmond looked sorry.”

Chapter Seven

“On a fine summer evening about two years after the sad day that had seen the departure of Edmée and her mother from their beloved home, Madame Germain, with her husband and son, was sitting on the bench in front of their cottage – the cottage which is at present, at the time I am writing, inhabited by Mathurine Le Blanc and her sons, standing, as I think I have already said, some short way out of the village – enjoying a little rest after the labour of the day. Not that they were altogether idle. The mother was of course knitting, the father smoking his pipe, if that can be considered an occupation, and the son was holding an open letter in his hand, from which he had just been reading aloud.

”‘Yes,’ he said, ‘in a few days from now we may certainly expect her. She was to leave the next week, my lady says, and that is a fortnight ago.’

”‘Old Ludovic was to bring her a part of the way, was he not?’ said Germain, taking his pipe out of his mouth; ‘I wish he had been coming all the way. I should have liked a talk about many things with the good old man.’

”‘Ah yes,’ agreed his wife, ‘and so should I. But think of the long journey, Germain, and he is getting very old.’

”‘Besides, he would never have agreed to leave my lady and her daughter for so long,’ said Pierre. ‘Think – now that Nanette has left them, old Ludovic is the only one of their own people about them! Oh, how I wish my lady would make up her mind to come home!’

”‘Perhaps she cannot – she hints as much,’ said Madame Germain. ‘You know the Marquis is the dear child’s guardian bylaw, and he is an obstinate man once he takes a thing in his head. But we shall hear more from Nanette – more, perhaps, than the Countess likes to write; letters are risky things, to my way of thinking.’

”‘And these are ticklish times,’ said father Germain. He was a man of few words, and therefore what he did say carried the more weight.

”‘Yes, father, you are right,’ said Pierre, and unconsciously he dropped his voice and spoke in a lower key. ‘Our good curé was telling me some strange things to-day. The bad feeling is spreading fast. There was a château fired last week not very far from Sarinet. To be sure it was put out and no lives lost; but there was a good deal of destruction done, and it shows that it is coming nearer.’

”‘But here at Valmont,’ said his mother, always slow to believe ill, ‘I could never be afraid. Think how steady and industrious a set our people are – how loyal and faithful they have always shown themselves; and with good reason, for have they not ever been treated most generously and kindly by our masters?’

”‘Ah yes,’ said Germain, ‘but it is not always the majority that carries the day. Here, as everywhere, there are some idle and discontented and turbulent spirits – enough to give trouble if they united with others. And I am assured that in no case is it the country people themselves that start the thing. Poor creatures! they are mostly too ground-down and wretched to start anything. But they are ready to follow, though not to lead, and the fire of revolt once lighted by the secret emissaries sent for the purpose from Paris, soon spreads. Alas, I see not what is before us all – here even in our quiet, happy Valmont!’

“Pierre, who had listened eagerly to his father’s words, was on the point of replying when he suddenly started. They had been talking so earnestly that they had not heard footsteps coming up the few yards of lane which led from the village main street, till the new-comer was close to them, and Pierre, recovering from his first surprise, touched his mother on the shoulder.